


What We Leave Behind

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst and Feels, M/M, Magic, Medieval Fantasy AU, Prince Draco Malfoy, Royalty, Thief Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-29 03:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14464104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: When Harry comes to Draco Malfoy's Kingdom, he doesn't expect to get caught stealing from him. Well, he expects tostealfrom the rich snob, but it's the getting caught bit, and what happens after, that takes him by surprise.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No warnings, not even mild language, I don't think? I hope you enjoy!

Harry had been called many things over the years. Lurker, Loiterer, Lazy Oaf, when he was younger and liked to pick his way through the streets, barefoot and bronze. Now he was Trickster, sometimes, or Thief. Fire-Dancer was the newest one, from the crowds of people that watched him walk the furiously hot coals in the squares. 

His travels began in the middle of summer, and lead him to Cerphays. A new Kingdom brought new names, always. The names were rarely said kindly. But he had his leather circles on his wrist, one each from his mum and dad, before he was more than a year old, and he had a bag full of belongings, and the rags on his shoulders and around his knees kept him warm enough. The fire he tossed into his mouth for the amusement of others kept him warmer still. He had everything he needed, and nothing he wanted, except the freedom to go where he pleased. He didn’t need kindness. 

He set up camp on the outskirts of the Kingdom, where the Viridian Forest met the squat wall that ringed the lower village, and then he ventured out onto the streets. 

The waterways of Cerphays were thin and long, narrow grooves cut into the slabs of stone that made up the cleanly-swept streets. Harry navigated the thick crowds of colourful people and stood in an alleyway at the bottom of the waterways. He pulled his hood up over his head, an act that unnerved most people, as it meant they could only see his eyes, like small glints of emerald hidden in a vast cave. 

At the top of the steepest hill, the one that housed the Blacksmiths and the Forges, the Bakers and the Veg shop, unbeknownst to Harry, Draco Malfoy stood a few metres from the Palace gate, and sharpened his arrowheads. His bow sat at his feet, and he perched on an unmarked pillar like one of the cherub statues that his mother insisted on putting up around the garden.

As the summer sun began to fade, Draco gathered the faulty, chipped arrowheads that wouldn’t fly between pale fingers. He dropped them in the waterways with soft plinks, pausing to watch the beginning of their slow descent, and then raced after them, feet dancing alone the hard ground.

This was what Harry saw. He saw a boy, not quite a man, following the sparks of light down the streets, dodging the people out and about, carrying baskets of bread and paper and cloth. Sunlight glinted off the arrowheads, turning them silver, little specks of magic. Harry watched from the alleyway, strangely drawn to the wisps of blonde hair and the way the boy moved, like liquid. 

The main street took Draco down to the base of Cerphays, which was still one of the richest Kingdoms on the good, green Earth, even after one hundred years. Harry’s Kingdom hadn’t been a Kingdom at all; it had been a village of sorts, out in the red plains, and a poor one at that. But he knew of others. There was Kalaphite, to the North, that dealt in cold, hard gems, mined from the rough ground which it was built upon, but it had nothing on Draco’s Kingdom. Cerphays was spun from softer gold, and it showed. It was pretty; there were tapestries hanging from the stone walls in the streets and silver statues in the square, and the crystal fountains shone in the evening light.

The grind of metal against stone stopped the boy in his tracks, and he bent to observe as the arrowheads gathered against the stone grating at the bottom of the waterways. He plucked each one from the watery depths and pocketed them, humming under his breath. He was not aware that he was being watched until Harry decided to speak up from the shadows. 

“I’ve seen children playing in these waters,” Harry said, leaning heavily against the brick wall beside him. “They could easily cut their feet on your idea of fun.”

The boy didn’t drop the arrowheads. He spared a glance towards Harry, and then he went back to work. He waited until he had all six arrowheads buried deep in his silk pocket, and then he stood and stretched. Leisurely, like he had all the time in the world, and perhaps he had. He looked like the kind of man with money in his blood, but in Harry’s experience, all blood ran red in the end. 

Harry stepped forward. The boy squinted at him. 

“What do you want?” the boy asked, stepping over the waterways and into Harry’s space. His pointy face, which was quite handsome in an ethereal sort of way, narrowed even further. “Are you one of the Faceless?”

Harry had heard of faceless creatures that roamed the land in search of prey, but those resided in the Forests of Faint, farther to the South. He didn’t think he looked anything like them - they didn’t bother to hide their lack of features with hoods, but the boy clearly had an overactive imagination. 

On closer examination, the boy had the badge of Royals pinned to his collar. Harry had seen that before, but only once. He had seen it on his own father’s collar, and his mother’s waistband. Only in pictures, the two small portraits he carried in his bag, but he had seen it nonetheless, and he knew what it meant. The Prince of Cerphays had come out into the summer sun to play. 

“What do I want?” Harry hummed. “Nothing I can’t get for myself. Why don't you run along and finish playing before the Guards come to escort you safely home.”

The boy bristled. Harry didn’t know his name; he knew there was a Prince in this Kingdom, and a King, and a Queen, and that was all. 

“If you don’t want anything, then why are you here? You didn’t get my attention for nothing.”

Harry sighed. It was an expressive sound, laden with boredom and exasperation, and the boy abruptly looked like a small child tugging at his mother’s skirts. And then he looked angry and irritated, and he stepped even further into Harry’s space, which Harry had never liked. 

And when he didn’t like something, people knew about it. 

Stories would rage for years about the fire that bloomed in Cerphays. It grew out of the ground, they said, sending fissures through the streets and rupturing the stones until they burst upwards like corks out of a bottle. Flames soared in the shapes of dragons and owls and serpents through the streets. Draco Malfoy, the Crown Prince, was almost burned to a crisp at the hands of a stranger. 

Draco Malfoy, the Crown Prince, looked highly unimpressed by the display of talent, but Harry could see the fear in his eyes and his shock in the rigid way he stood, like every muscle in his body had locked into place. People talked of fight of flight in the face of fear, but there was another option; freeze. 

Underneath the fear, there was a layer of intrigue. 

Harry closed his mouth and clenched his fists, and the fire died. It fizzled out with a hiss, and the dragons became vapour, the serpents became soot, the owls became ash. The boy in front of him stumbled back into the orange sunlight, and people gasped and came running. Guards tumbled down the streets in pairs, and Harry knew the boy could only see his eyes, so he winked one of them and dipped back even further into the shadows. 

“Prince Draco,” said one of the Guards, brandishing a sword. “Are you hurt? Step back, everyone! Give him some space.”

Harry snorted. He wondered if Draco had liked the dragons made of fire. He wondered if Draco had ever seen anything more frightening than the pictures of battles in his glossy storybooks. He wondered if he was about to get stabbed by a long sword that was clearly over-compensating for something, and just to be on the safe side, he started to climb. 

People didn’t tend to look up, he had realised, when they were on the hunt for two-legged things. Rooftops made for a pretty good escape, so he found footholds and ledges in the rough bricks and hooked his hands into them, climbing up the walls of the house beside him. Most of the roofs connected loosely, and if they didn’t, the gap was small enough to bridge with a quick jump. 

The rooftops were bathed in gold. Cerphays looked as rich as it felt, and the light touched the tapestries woven through the streets as Harry danced from roof to roof. He came to a stop at the top of the main street, the hill where Draco Malfoy had perched only minutes before, unaware that his life was about to change irrevocably, and sat down on the roof. His feet dangled over the ledge, and he kicked his shoes up and caught them one-handed, letting the cool breeze touch his toes. 

The Palace stood in the distance, past silver-wrought gates and a garden overflowing with lavender and pink and lemon-yellow. Blossoms filled the air as the wind rifled through the leaves. The doors, although small and far away, were plainly opened, and a fine stream of guests in finery had begun to gather at the gates. 

Harry could still smell smoke and fire, but there was a richer, deeper scent of spice and wine that flowed from the direction of the Palace. A Palace like that, Harry thought, had to be worth breaking into. 

The danger of names, is that sometimes, if you hear them enough, you start to become them. Lurker, _Thief,_ Fire-Dancer. Harry was all those things and more. 

The stream of guests became a crowd that billowed and buzzed like nervous bees. It would be easy, he thought, to slip in amongst them, and then leave again with his pockets stuffed with treasures. Like he was invisible, like he had never been there. He had done it before. He grinned, swinging his feet, swallowed by the sun. 

Harry had been called many names over the years, but never Gatecrasher. It looked like he was about to add one more unkindness to the list.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I wasn’t attempting to steal anything,” Harry interrupted, to which there was another uproar of whispers. “I was succeeding.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! More! Hope you enjoy!

Harry wasn't expecting to get caught. He wasn’t expecting for two Guards and Draco Malfoy, the Crown Prince, to find him near the window, next to an expensive vase, and drag him off down the halls. 

Harry’s eyes followed the flutter of Draco’s purple cape as he was pulled down the corridor. The Palace was huge and built like a labyrinth, with a thousand twists and turns, and any other time, Harry would have waited before he crept inside. He would have gathered information and worked out the best entry points before swooping in to fill his pockets, but the promise of lots of drunk, loud guests was too much to pass up. He wasn’t likely to get a guise like this to hide behind again so soon. 

“I knew you’d be here tonight,” Draco said, in a smug tone of voice. Harry could see the line of his pointy jaw as he tipped his head to the side to gloat, just barely looking over his shoulder, but not quite deigning to look at him. “I knew as soon as I saw you that you’d be after something in the Palace.”

“Funny, that. You must be a clairvoyant,” Harry said, “because I had no idea I’d be stealing from you until long after I escaped you and your Guards. And you made it so easy. There’s something so tempting about the stupidity of men, don't you think?”

The Guards tightened their grip on his arms, but Harry thought he heard a cough from the one on his left. A flurry of red hair peeked out from beneath her silver helmet, but that was all Harry could see. The one on his right didn’t seem moved. 

Draco fumed silently, a blush gathering at his jaw, which he angled away from Harry. He turned sharply to the left, fists clenched at his sides, and Harry was marched around a corner after him. Double doors loomed at the end of the corridor, and a muffled wave of noise reached him from behind the panes of heavy oak. Laughter and chatter and the delicate clink of glass flutes. 

All of it died as Draco threw open the doors and swanned inside, Harry at his heels. The crowd of sleek gowns and puffy skirts and pressed suits parted like long grass on a breezy day, and Harry was woven through the path left behind as Draco made his way up to the thrones at the far end of the room. Only the noise of the band remained, paid to play until they were explicitly told to stop. The quiet perfectly illuminated the sound of Draco’s squeaky heels on the floor, and the slap of Harry’s bare feet. He had no need to be quiet now, caught as he was, so he let himself be visible, audible. 

His hood was still up, and people began to whisper. Whispers of wraiths and the Faceless and nightmares creeping up from catacombs in the West. Murmurings of the fish-people that swam in the deep, coughed up onto land and hidden behind cloth. Harry scoffed beneath the thin material. He was just a boy. A boy with fire in his skull and magic and a dead past, but a boy nonetheless. 

“Father,” Draco said, and the music from the band stopped at a raised hand. The whispers faded, and there was pure silence. Draco stopped in front of the two thrones, which held two strangely beautiful humans, both pale and glowing, and he bowed low. When he rose again, he said, “Mother. I found this thief attempting to steal the vase on the third floor.”

“I wasn’t attempting to steal anything,” Harry interrupted, to which there was another uproar of whispers. “I was succeeding.”

“You dare speak over my son?” said the man on the throne. The King, presumably, although it could be that Harry had wandered into a very strange familial situation. 

Draco was glowering at him, but he was also preening at the attention from his father. Harry rolled his eyes, safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t be seen, and uncaring if he could. 

“Now, now, Lucius,” said the woman beside him. “Something tells me we may want to hear what this young man has to say, if we want several priceless artefacts back.”

“Draco claims to have foiled him in the act, Narcissa,” Lucius said. He cast a look around the Throne Room, and then directed a subtle glare at Draco, who winced. “Although why this couldn’t wait until after the Ball, I’m not quite sure. We have dungeons for a reason.”

“Oh, he stopped me from getting the vase,” Harry agreed. “Just not the other stuff I stole earlier.”

The Guard on his left snorted, and then coughed again, bowing her head. Narcissa laced her hands together in her lap, a small smile playing around her stiff mouth. She was thin and tall, like her son and her husband, but there was something much kinder about her eyes, which glittered in the light from the crystal chandelier. 

“Father, I didn’t…”

Draco stopped speaking when Lucius looked at him sharply. Harry took an instant dislike to the man, although he didn't know why. 

“This may be an excellent opportunity to show the people exactly what we do with thieves in our Kingdom,” Lucius said silkily. He nodded to the Guard on Harry’s right, who reached for her sword, and Harry only had a second to wonder whether they were really going to kill him right in front of a sea of people, in the middle of their Throne Room, at a Ball, before Lucius said, “Cut off his hand.”

That was marginally better, but still not ideal. The Guard had her sword out quicker than Harry could breathe, but as she raised it, a feeling of great calm came over Harry. His arm was raised, outstretched, and his hand was gripped tightly, and he let loose a torrent of fire so violent from his fingers that it melted the armour right off the Guard’s hand. 

Shrieks and screams filled the room, and Harry felt both Guards let go of him. He shook himself loose and watched the guests scurry like ants, and quickly snuffed out the flames. He didn’t like to make people scared of him, but he wasn’t about to let someone chop off his hand without complaint. 

The Guard was cursing as she peeled off the molten remains of her armour. Metal drizzled on the floor like hot wax, the burned edges glowing orange with the heat. The Guard on his left was just staring. Draco was muttering something to his mother, who leaned in to listen, but Lucius was on his feet, shouting over the screams for more Guards. 

Harry couldn’t do magic very well without careful thought. Fire was different; fire was passion and mischief and rage and love, and all it took was emotion to blast its way free from Harry’s skin. Magic took a little more effort, but it was worth it for the way that Lucius dropped like a stone when one of the mosaic tiles fell from the ceiling and hit him squarely in the forehead. He crumpled against his throne, blessedly silent. A thin line of blood trickled down from a cut above his eyebrow. 

It was enough to stun the room. Guards burst through the doors and crowded around Harry in a circle, weapons raised aloft, but the people around them were silent and still. 

“Fat lot of good that will do,” muttered one of the braver guests, jerking a hand at the Guards. Several of them shifted their spears and crossbows, antsy. 

Narcissa rose from her throne, her long, violet skirts pooling around her bejewelled ankles. Harry knew of three people who would buy the anklet she wore for enough to keep him fed for months, and he felt cold envy curdle inside him. Narcissa beckoned him forward with painted fingers, and the Guard on his left escorted him forward with a gentle, polite hand on his shoulder, the circle of spears moving with them. They left the burning Guard behind, still cursing and flailing her burned hand. 

“That was quite a spectacle,” Narcissa said softly. She seemed wholly unconcerned with the unconscious figure of her husband beside her, but the protective hand on Draco’s wrist suggested that if Harry did the same thing to him, he would die a slow, painful death. Harry had no such intentions. “I’d quite like to meet the man who enjoys setting fire to my Kingdom. What do they call you?”

“They call me many things, ma’am,” Harry said, nodding his head respectfully. “None so kind that I could repeat them in present company. You could call me Harry, though.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Harry. Would you mind removing that hood of yours?”

“I would indeed mind,” Harry said, but the Guard on his left apparently didn’t understand hints, like the groaning, cursing one Harry had left behind them, and she ripped his hood back without preamble, sending a ripple through his black curls. 

People at the front gasped. Draco’s pale eyebrows rose, and his sneer disappeared as he was faced with Harry’s true nature, and not the hood he hid behind. His face became blank. The Guard who had ripped his hood off whistled lowly. 

Harry had always quite liked the scar on his face. He thought the rest of him was bland and uninteresting, but the scar that wove its way across his brown skin like bolts of lightning, beginning at his forehead and sliding down his temple to his cheekbone, was ethereal. Fierce. Strong. _Magic._ He wasn’t sure that others agreed, but he had long since learned not to care about other people's opinions of him, not when it came to how he looked. 

Narcissa hummed under her breath. “I thought so.”

There were very few people in the world who would be able to work out who Harry was, but Narcissa Malfoy looked like one such person. He tensed, and then gently let the tension loose from his shoulders. It wouldn’t do to confirm her suspicions, not with an audience. 

“Is there any particular reason why you came to steal from us?” Narcissa asked, sitting back down on her throne. 

“I didn’t come to steal from you. I came to visit, and maybe make a few coin, and then travel on,” Harry said, shrugging. “I only decided to steal from you because your Prince was entitled enough to put a bunch of sharp objects in the waterways, where the children were playing and drinking. I thought it might teach him a lesson, to lose something he valued.”

Draco’s cheeks reddened. He hissed something foul, but Narcissa’s grip on his wrist must have tightened, because he quieted, his expression sullen. 

“Do you have proof of this?” 

Harry grinned. He put his hand in his pocket and withdrew six arrowheads that wouldn’t fly. He had snatched them from Draco’s pocket the moment he got too close, and Draco had been too preoccupied with the fire to notice anything amiss, although he likely realised when he got home that the arrowheads were missing. It had been an easy steal. They didn’t call Harry a thief for nothing. 

Harry raised his cupped hands so that Narcissa could see the small, glinting pieces of silver, and Draco made a trampled, embarrassed sort of noise in the back of his throat. That seemed to be evidence enough for Narcissa because she released Draco’s wrist and sighed softly. 

Harry sent a smile to Draco, who snarled and stalked closer to him, heedless of his mother’s warning call. He was close enough to kiss when Harry decided to remind him of why that closeness was a bad idea. 

“You might want to step back,” Harry said quietly. “The last time you did this, you almost turned to ash, and I took something of yours.”

Draco paled. He looked to the Guard that had stuck by Harry, and the Guard simply shrugged. 

“Not sure I can do much if he decides to set fire to your hair,” said the Guard, in a much rougher voice than Harry was expecting. Harry shot her a considering look, amused, and she shrugged again. 

“Harry,” said Narcissa, interrupting their little conversation. “I’m not going to cut off your hand, but rest assured I could find a way if I wanted to, regardless of what powers you have hidden inside you.”

Harry did not doubt it. Narcissa didn’t seem like a woman to be crossed, and he had no intentions of doing so, not even to irritate her son. He nodded his thanks, and she held a hand up. 

“However, crimes such as yours cannot go unpunished in my Kingdom. I won’t take something from you, but you will give something to us.”

The room seemed to hold its breath. Narcissa’s eyes were glittering again, and Harry very much disliked the look. 

“What exactly will I be giving, ma’am?”

Narcissa smiled. “You’re going to protect my son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you! Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed it, I'd love to hear from you.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much! More to come soon! Please leave a comment/kudos and come say hey @thealmostrhetoricalquestion on tumblr, I'd love to know what you thought <3


End file.
